Zombie Religious Institutions
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Copyright 2018 by Elizabeth Sepper Printed in U.S.A. Vol. 112, No. 5 Articles ZOMBIE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS Elizabeth Sepper ABSTRACT—This Article uncovers and names a phenomenon of pressing importance for healthcare policy and religious liberty law: the rise of zombie religious institutions—organizations that have contractual commitments to religious identity but lack actual attachments to churches or associations of religious people. Contracts create religion—sometimes in perpetuity—for institutions that are not, or never have been, religious and for providers who do not share the institution’s religious precepts. This Article details religion’s spread across healthcare through affiliations, mergers, and—most surprisingly—sales of hospitals that continue religious practice after their connection to a church ends. These contracts require hospitals—secular and religious, public and private, for-profit and nonprofit—to comply with religious tenets. “Religious” institutions far removed from the paradigm of the church populate the marketplace. In this way, private law impedes public policy, expanding the universe of institutions eligible for religious exemption from otherwise applicable laws. Moreover, as the category of religious institution loses its specialness, theories of religious institutionalism founder. The presumption of autonomy of religious institutions from regulation cannot survive in the marketplace where religious identity can be bought and sold. AUTHOR—Associate Professor, Washington University School of Law. Thank you for comments and discussion to Richard Schragger, Mary Anne Case, Andrew Koppelman, Richard Garnett, Greg Magarian, Alex Boni- Saenz, Christopher Lund, Pauline Kim, Deb Widiss, James Nelson, and participants in faculty workshops at Notre Dame Law School, the University of Houston Law Center, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, and Washington University School of Law as well as the University of Chicago Workshop on Regulating Family, Sex, and Gender. Thank you to the staff of the Northwestern University Law Review, in particular Joey Becker, Ian Flanagan, Connor Madden, Alex Ogren, Haley Soshnick and Arielle Tolman for their excellent editorial work. 929 N O R T H W E S T E R N U N I V E R S I T Y L A W R E V I E W INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................... 930 I. THE MARKET FOR RELIGIOUS COMPLIANCE AND IDENTITY ................................. 934 A. Evolution of Catholic Healthcare Institutions .......................................... 934 B. Spread of Religion to Non-Catholic Healthcare ....................................... 937 C. Development of Zombie Catholic Hospitals ............................................. 940 II. UNDERMINING PUBLIC POLICY ......................................................................... 947 A. Interplay Between Contract and Exemption ............................................. 948 B. Potential for Regulatory Arbitrage .......................................................... 955 C. Exception Swallowing the Rule ............................................................... 958 III. DESTABILIZING RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONALISM .................................................. 963 A. The Freedom of the Church .................................................................... 964 B. Religious Market Dominance .................................................................. 969 C. Involuntary Associations ......................................................................... 972 D. The End of Religious Exemption in Commerce? ....................................... 979 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................... 986 INTRODUCTION West Suburban Hospital is a zombie religious institution. It does not unite a community of religious people. It is disconnected from any church. Located in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, West Suburban was an independent community hospital when Catholic Resurrection Health sought to purchase it in 2004.1 Its medical staff did not share the Catholic values of the buyer; indeed, they opposed religious restrictions on their treatment of patients. The sale, however, ultimately went through.2 West Suburban became Catholic. Just five years later, West Suburban was sold to a for-profit investor. By the terms of the sale, the now-for-profit hospital will not be listed as Catholic and must remove crucifixes and religious art.3 Nonetheless, it remains obligated to prohibit the performance of abortions and sterilizations.4 Based on five years of Catholic ownership in its almost 100- year history, West Suburban became perpetually bound to Catholic restrictions.5 By contract, this previously secular institution became religious. Once sold, the religious institution survived in zombie form— 1 Marty Stempniak, West Sub Sold to MacNeal Owner, OAKPARK.COM (published Nov. 24, 2009, 2:06 PM; updated Dec. 1, 2009, 10:10 PM), http://www.oakpark.com/News/Articles/12-1-2009/West- Sub-sold-to-MacNeal-owner [https://perma.cc/6E3Q-PDE5]. 2 Id. 3 Id. 4 Id. 5 Edwin Yohnka, A Bad Deal for Health Care in Illinois, HUFFINGTON POST (published May 20, 2010, 6:42 PM; updated May 25, 2011), http://www.huffingtonpost.com/edwin-yohnka/a-bad-deal-for- health-car_b_584000.html [https://perma.cc/F3LG-79PB]. 930 112:929 (2018) Zombie Religious Institutions lacking a live connection to religion but contractually committed to religious identity. Zombie religious institutions have emerged at a moment when law and theory have taken a distinctly institutional turn. This new religious institutionalism places institutions—not individuals—at the core of religious liberty and grants them a special status in the social order.6 The doctrinal high-water mark is the 2012 Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC decision, in which the Supreme Court carved out a constitutional sphere of substantial autonomy from regulation for religious institutions through a doctrine known as the ministerial exception.7 Encouraged by Hosanna-Tabor, a number of legal scholars advocate granting near-absolute immunity from governmental regulation to churches—defined to encompass at least some commercial entities.8 The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. shed additional light on this problem.9 In a challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurance plans cover contraception, the Supreme Court held that closely held for-profit corporations could promote religion like nonprofit religious organizations and were equally entitled to religious accommodation.10 Ascribing religion to the for-profit corporation—that is, a nexus of contracts11¾the Court’s decision further raised the stakes for religious institutionalism.12 6 See, e.g., Richard W. Garnett, Do Churches Matter? Towards an Institutional Understanding of the Religion Clauses, 53 VILL. L. REV. 273, 293 (2008) (“[A]n appropriately institutional approach to the Religion Clauses would involve attention to the religious-freedom rights of religious entities . .”). 7 565 U.S. 171, 179, 188 (2012) (holding that religious institutions need not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act with regard to employees who are “ministers”). 8 See generally Paul Horwitz, Freedom of the Church Without Romance, 21 J. CONTEMP. LEGAL ISSUES 59, 59–60 (2013); John D. Inazu, The Freedom of the Church (New Revised Standard Version), 21 J. CONTEMP. LEGAL ISSUES 335, 338 (2013); Steven D. Smith, Freedom of Religion or Freedom of the Church?, in LEGAL RESPONSES TO RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN THE UNITED STATES 249, 249–50 (Austin Sarat ed., 2012). For responses, see Andrew Koppelman, “Freedom of the Church” and the Authority of the State, 21 J. CONTEMP. LEGAL ISSUES 145, 146 (2013), and Richard C. Schragger & Micah Schwartzman, Lost in Translation: A Dilemma for Freedom of the Church, 21 J. CONTEMP. LEGAL ISSUES 15, 16 (2013). 9 134 S. Ct. 2751, 2769 (2014). 10 Id. at 2759. 11 See, e.g., R. H. Coase, The Nature of the Firm, 4 ECONOMICA 386 (1937) (setting out this theory of the firm); see also Michael C. Jensen & William H. Meckling, Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structures, 3 J. FIN. ECON. 305, 311 (1976) (discussing corporation as nexus of contracts). 12 Michael A. Helfand & Barak D. Richman, The Challenge of Co-Religionist Commerce, 64 DUKE L.J. 769, 778 (2015) (observing that “tensions between religious exercise and commercial objectives stand at the center of some of the most foundational church-state debates in the United States”); Nathan B. Oman, The Need for a Law of Church and Market, 64 DUKE L.J. ONLINE 141, 143 (2015) (“[W]e lack a clear set of theories and metaphors specifying what role, if any, religion should play in commerce.”). 931 N O R T H W E S T E R N U N I V E R S I T Y L A W R E V I E W Using healthcare as its case study, this Article argues that when religion and commerce combine, commercial transactions shape religious compliance and identity. As religious identity spreads through contract, “religious” institutions far removed from the paradigm of the church populate the marketplace. Secular, for-profit, and government institutions can become religious and eligible for legislative and judicial exemptions from regulation. This contracting of religion—the rise of zombie religious institutions in particular—exposes the weakness in the theory of religious institutionalism, which would allow institutions